Good Taste Is Bad For You

Like so many in my profession, I loved science fiction while growing up,
and didn't get along all that well with my peers. Ok, I admit it,
I was a complete nerd. You could spot me walking home from school,
the skinny guy with his nose buried in a sci-fi, tripping over the cracks
in the sidewalk. I loved the galaxy-sized ideas in those books.

Lately I've been rereading my old favorites, and I now see why my parents
didn't appreciate the original Star Trek the way I did, and why so many
people are turned off of sci-fi permanently after reading that first
recommended title, usually Asimov's Foundation.
The characters stink! They're incredibly wooden or shallow or overacted.
Ok, it's no surprise to most of you, but I it was a shocking revelation for
me.

I had terrible people skills, and Kirk seemed fine to me. As I lived and
read more, Kirk got dopier and dopier.
Now that I can do the small-talk thing at
parties, and can appreciate those movie scenes where they don't say
anything or blow anything up, but instead twitch their lips or avert their
eyes shyly, Kirk seems positively inane.
(Don't get me wrong, I still love him. I just don't
have a good reason anymore).

Taste

I'll never enjoy Star Trek the same way again. What's scary is that
this sort of thing has been happening to me more and more lately.
Suddenly French cuisine is better than french fries.
A $3000 stereo sounds better than a $200 one.
It bothers me when my socks are different colors.

I've gone and developed taste. In fact, in some cases I've even worked at it.
I took a class in music appreciation, and tried to taste the subtleties of
that expensive Bordeaux I bought last year by accident. So now I have to
spend twice as much to enjoy wine the way I used to.

As for science fiction, I still read plenty, but now I only find a couple
books a year that are really good. Some of the others, I might as well
be reading the lawnmower instruction manual for the character development.
On the whole, I'm sure that my improved appeciation for literary subtlety
has decreased my overall enjoyment. Good taste is a bad thing.

What Is A Nerd?

Clearly, then, given a choice, one should stick to bad taste. It saves money
and makes you happier. Unfortunately, when it comes
to people skills (the main culprit in my decreased enjoyment of sci-fi),
age brings them to most of us whether we want them or not.
You can't help but learn what pisses people off and develop mechanisms to
avoid it. Like, when your girlfriend
won't talk to you for a week, that's a clue.

Somehow, real nerds have some sort of teflon protection against learning
people skills. The wannabe nerds, like me, end up partially adapted to
human society, neither fish nor fowl. But real nerds piss people off
right and left with nary a clue. These are the guys (yes, even wannabe
nerds are allowed to use "guys" to refer to both genders) who still
rank the Foundation series in the top ten literature of all time, and
who wear funny suits and make
respectful hand gestures when Spock enters the room.

Some people disagree, and say that what I'm describing are simply boors.
It's true, neither boors nor nerds grok people.
But there's a difference. Boors are anti people-skills. They corral
you at the party and won't let go, and nothing will dissuade them. Their
ultimate evolution is the Jehovah's Witness.

On the other hand, nerds are merely uninterested in people skills.
They'll sit quietly until the
conversation turns to something interesting, like how much RAM is optimal for
a Web server, will loudly derive the solution by constructing a simulator
out of olives and celery sticks, and will shut down again.
If you were to give a nerd the algorithm for people interaction, he'd use
it when appropriate if he didn't have anything better to do.

The really fascinating aspect is that, although somewhat rare, nerds are far
more common than the masters of other philosophies. Nerdliness might be one
of the easiest paths to Satori for regular people. That sublime indifference
to people skills brings a state that's richer and more fulfulling,
and the sci-fi is much better. I'll write more about it just as soon
as I find my way back.